The biggest questions ever asked ... answered.

[SB_UK]

The biggest questions ever asked

newscientist.com/article/the biggest questions ever asked

• 18 November 2006
• Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

To celebrate New Scientist magazine's 50^th birthday, we have decided to tackle the truly big questions ... ... ...
---1---
What is reality? By Roger Penrose
Can we be sure that the world we experience is not just a figment of our imaginations?
---2---
What is life? By Robert Hazen
If we encountered alien life, chances are we wouldn't recognise it - not even if it were here on Earth
---3---
Do we have free will? By Patricia Churchland
The more we find out about how the brain works, the less room there seems to be for personal choice or responsibility
---4---
Is the universe deterministic? By Vlatko Vedral
However you look at it, the answer seems to be "maybe"
---5---
What is consciousness? By Paul Broks
How does the brain, with its diverse distributed functions, come to arrive at a unified sense of identity?
---6---
Will we ever have a theory of everything? By Michio Kaku
2000 years of rational enquiry may be approaching their crowning glory. Just one more push could be enough
---7---
What happens after you die? By Mary Roach
We have all wondered if there is an afterlife, but only a few are brave - or foolish - enough to try and find out
---8---
What comes after humans? By James Hughes
All species are fated either to die out or to evolve into something else - all except humans, who have a chance of a transcendent future


Solutions
(to all bar 6
- in the next post)

-> importantly though
- all are solved using the solution to ---6--- (b)

->- ->- ->-

---6---
(a) Will we ever have a theory of everything? By Michio Kaku
(b) 2000 years of rational enquiry may be approaching their crowning glory.
(c) Just one more push could be enough ...

Solution to ---6---

(a) Yes

(b) Yes -> Theory of Everything == (3 -> 4 -> 13)n

(c) Yes

[SB_UK]

---6--- post#1

---8--- post#2

What comes after humans? By James Hughes
All species are fated either to die out or to evolve into something else - all except humans, who have a chance of a transcendent future

~s~

In this essay James Hughes addresses What Comes After Homo sapiens? IN 1957, biologist Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous, coined the term “transhumanism” for the idea that we should use technology to transcend the limitations of our bodies and brains. Huxley believed that “the human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself” through “evolutionary humanism”.
Almost half a century on, transhumanism has become a real possibility, pointing the way to an unbelievably transcendent future that would have been unimaginable even to Huxley. The choices we make today are deciding an answer to the question “What comes after human civilisation?”....

Solution:

~eg~ ADDF thread posts#1,#2 and post#6

Originally Posted by excerpt from post#1

------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
Man is evolving
&
ADDers represent the evolved state
------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------

Originally Posted by post#2

Does it matter whether or not we (as a species) - understand this idea ?
->- this idea ->-
------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
Man is evolving
&
ADDers represent the evolved state
------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------

Yes

- this is the most important idea which has ever been thought.
(I'll elaborate later (if required)).

Originally Posted by excerpt from post#6

When we make a cup of tea - we choose to make the cup of tea.
I believe that the 'thirst for knowledge' which has characterized our society over the last few thousand years - has been driven by the urge to fill our minds
- up unto the point -
where an increased complexity of mind is mandated
(an evolutionary speciation event is demanded)
- to handle the increased information
- and all of this without us realising it
(unlike the cup of tea).

We are currently observing the following transition (speciation event)

Homo sapiens subsp. sapiens -> Homo neosapiens subsp. sapienses*

* of course
- name offered up solely as suggestion to the wider nomenclature/taxonomic community when the decision is made to attribute a name to our newly developing currently emerging emergent species.
- and through nod to 'the Matrix' -> see solution to ---1--- (later)
and the major (human) religious leaders - most notably
Buddha (-600) yrs before,
Jesus (-600+600)
and
Mohammed (-600+600+600) years after
- as a Trimurti.

[SB_UK]

---6--- post#1
---8--- post#2

---7---
What happens after you die? By Mary Roach
We have all wondered if there is an afterlife, but only a few are brave - or foolish - enough to try and find out

We're dead.

The important question is what can we validly hope for evolution to deliver in the future?
and we can solve this question with the idea which arises from the following combination of ideas:

-1- Evolution ~eg~ of virus has favoured long term survival of virus - and existence with host - and not extermination of host.
This represents 4 -> 13 dimensions in
(3->4->13d)n

-2- We live for many years - and the tendency is towards increased longevity -
so how?

-3- Bipolarity is featured as an aspect of emergent structures

-4- Mammals have a 'remarkably constant number of heart beats from 240 x 5 years in the rat versus 5 x 200 years in the Galactic toitoise - from

Time (Revz) thread on ADDF :: Science (Demonic Goddess)

-5- Heart beat relates to bipolarity also - a shift between poles - the basis underlying potential energy.
See the pulsar ~or~ :-)
Tammy's (meadd823) avatar - the pulsating cat.

-6- Emergent evolution defines an evolutionary life cycle for the evolutionary structure (time from the perspective of the thing
- is a consequence of the evolutionary status of a thing) -
- whereby - 'lifetime' increases with evolutionary advancement.

The sun is currently half way (~ at 5 in its 10 billion years of stunning radiance) through its evolutionary cycle.

-7- The heart rate slows in meditation - and man is becoming an ever more efficient aerobic organism - we're becoming endurance aerobic and not 'explosive' anaerobic organisms.

-8- The meditative state is associated with lowered EEG and creativity
- the theta/alpha EEG switch (between the sleeping and waking states) at approximately 8 Hz -
-> -> ->
- the frequency of firing of the central dopaminergic circuit -> ~8 Hz
and
- the frequency of the principal mode of the Schumann resonance -> ~8 Hz.

---7---
What happens after you die? By Mary Roach
We have all wondered if there is an afterlife, but only a few are brave - or foolish - enough to try and find out

We have evolved from a long chain of emergent events - each of which increases in the length of their subsequent life cycle -
- the increased energy which is incorporated in post-emergent structures (by definition here) - changes the relative cycling time (relative to its previous form) - and so reflects a greater 'longevity' - when the pre- and post-emergent structure life cycles are measured on the same scale.

It's a little like stating that a car travelling at 30 mph will take longer to travel 1000 times around a 1 mile circuit than it will take to travel 1000 times around a 400 metre circuit (and still at a constant 30 mph).

---7---
What happens after you die? By Mary Roach
We have all wondered if there is an afterlife, but only a few are brave - or foolish - enough to try and find out

We're worm guacamole
- but that's not the point.

[SB_UK]

from ~source~

The Big Questions
With Natalie Angier, Gregg Easterbrook, James Gleick, Brian Greene,
Kevin Kelly, Richard Preston, Richard Rhodes & more

---9---
What’s at Earth’s core?
---10---
Is time an illusion?
---11---
How does a fertilized egg become a human?
---12---
Why do we sleep?
---13---
What happened to the Neanderthals?
---14---
Where did life come from?
---15---
How can observation affect the outcome of an experiment?
---16---
How do entangled particles communicate?
---17---
Why do placebos work?
---18---
What is the universe made of?
---19---
What is the purpose of noncoding DNA?
---20---
Will forests slow global warming - or speed it up?
---21---
What happens to information in a black hole?
---22---
What causes ice ages?
---23---
How does the brain calculate movement?
---24---
Why do the poles reverse?
---25---
How does the brain produce consciousness?
---26---
Why is fundamental physics so messy?
---27---
How doth human language evolve?
---28---
Why can’t we predict the weather?
---29---
Why don’t we understand turbulence?
---30---
Is the universe actually made of information?
---31---
Why do some diseases turn into pandemics?
---32---
Can mathematicians prove the Riemann hypothesis?
---33---
Why do we die when we do?
---34---
What causes gravity?
---35---
Why can’t we regrow body parts?
---36---
Why do we still have big questions?
---37---
Which counts more: nature or nurture?
---38---
What is the Large Hadron Collider?
---39---
Is time travel possible?
---40---
If there is life on other planets, why haven’t they contacted us?
---41---
Do nonhuman animals have culture?

[SB_UK]

~source~

"Millennium Madness"
Physics Problems for the Next Millennium

In 1900 the world-renowned mathematician David Hilbert presented twenty-three problems at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris. These problems have inspired mathematicians throughout the last century. Indeed, Hilbert's address has had a profound impact on the direction of mathematics, reaching far beyond the original twenty-three problems themselves. As a piece of millennial madness, all participants of the Strings 2000 Conference were invited to help formulate the ten most important unsolved problems in fundamental physics. Each participant was allowed to submit one candidate problem for consideration. To qualify, the problem must not only have been important but also well-defined and stated in a clear way.
The best 10 problems were selected at the end of the conference by a selection panel consisting of:

• Michael Duff (University of Michigan)
• David Gross (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara)
• Edward Witten (Caltech & Institute for Advanced Studies)

~aka~

"Millennium Madness"
Physics Problems for the Next Couple of posts on ADDF


~s~

Brilliant minds predict the next 50 years New Scientist asked the smartest brains on the planet to forecast the biggest breakthroughs of the next half century

What it must be like to be 'briliant'?
so was that 'briliant' or cheap spangly celebrities?

They are simply human beings - whose discoveries would have been made by another - given their absence -
it is important to see that all of the answers (to be provided here) - to all of these questions - lead one to define an effectively equivalent potential for brilliance in any human being -
given appropriate circumstance.
...
-*-
...
We are all the same
...
Isn't it about time we ironed out the legacy physical hierarchies within a species which is defined by its mind ?
- not 'physical' possessions but 'mental' wealth -
a rich internal milieu of mind -
the aspiration - evolution through
- development of our (internal) rrrealit(-ies).
...
We have moved on
...
-*-
...

• ---41--- Are all the (measurable) dimensionless parameters that characterize the physical universe calculable in principle or are some merely determined by historical or quantum mechanical accident and uncalculable?
  David Gross, Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
• ---42--- How can quantum gravity help explain the origin of the universe?
  Edward Witten, California Institute of Technology and Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
• ---43--- What is the lifetime of the proton and how do we understand it?
  Steve Gubser, Princeton University and California Institute of Technology
• ---44--- Is Nature supersymmetric, and if so, how is supersymmetry broken?
  Sergio Ferrara, CERN (European Laboratory of Particle Physics)
  Gordon Kane, University of Michigan
• ---45--- Why does the universe appear to have one time and three space dimensions?
  Shamit Kachru, University of California, Berkeley
  Sunil Mukhi, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
  Hiroshi Ooguri, California Institute of Technology
• ---46--- Why does the cosmological constant have the value that it has, is it zero and is it really constant?
  Andrew Chamblin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  Renata Kallosh, Stanford University
• ---47--- What are the fundamental degrees of freedom of M-theory (the theory whose low-energy limit is eleven-dimensional supergravity and which subsumes the five consistent superstring theories) and does the theory describe Nature?
  Louise Dolan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  Annamaria Sinkovics, Spinoza Institute
  Billy & Linda Rose, San Antonio College
• ---48--- What is the resolution of the black hole information paradox?
  Tibra Ali, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge
  Samir Mathur, Ohio State University
• ---49--- What physics explains the enormous disparity between the gravitational scale and the typical mass scale of the elementary particles?
  Matt Strassler, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
• ---50--- Can we quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement in Quantum Chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap?
  Igor Klebanov, Princeton University
  Oyvind Tafjord, McGill University

[Revz]

Originally Posted by SB_UK

The biggest questions ever asked


newscientist.com/article/the biggest questions ever asked

• 18 November 2006
• Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

To celebrate New Scientist magazine's 50^th birthday, we have decided to tackle the truly big questions ... ... ...
---1---
What is reality? By Roger Penrose
Can we be sure that the world we experience is not just a figment of our imaginations?
---2---
What is life? By Robert Hazen
If we encountered alien life, chances are we wouldn't recognise it - not even if it were here on Earth
---3---
Do we have free will? By Patricia Churchland
The more we find out about how the brain works, the less room there seems to be for personal choice or responsibility
---4---
Is the universe deterministic? By Vlatko Vedral
However you look at it, the answer seems to be "maybe"
---5---
What is consciousness? By Paul Broks
How does the brain, with its diverse distributed functions, come to arrive at a unified sense of identity?
---6---
Will we ever have a theory of everything? By Michio Kaku
2000 years of rational enquiry may be approaching their crowning glory. Just one more push could be enough
---7---
What happens after you die? By Mary Roach
We have all wondered if there is an afterlife, but only a few are brave - or foolish - enough to try and find out
---8---
What comes after humans? By James Hughes
All species are fated either to die out or to evolve into something else - all except humans, who have a chance of a transcendent future

I have the feeling that if some of these were answered, a lot of people would kill them selves. not me though .

[SB_UK]

Originally Posted by Revz

I have the feeling that if some of these were answered, a lot of people would kill them selves.

I have the feeling that these're the very people who kill others -
without even the slightest of moments of reflection over the morality of their actions.

Originally Posted by Revz

not me though .

I know :-)

because you're not one of the people who seeks to engineer partitions between people with labels -
brilliant minds - how very funny - when we find that all of those who'd either call or seek to be called
'special'
for some characteristic of mind -
- are by definition NOT -
they are not brilliant
she does not have a greater intelligence than you
he is not stupid

that is the beauty of mind -
mind is simply the equivalent of DNA - with the capacity to 'mutate' without mutation - at will
- thought is the equivalent to the mind -
- of mutation to DNA.

Did anybody really think that we were worse than the simplest of micro-organisms - because of our reduced rate of mutation to environmental trigger.

Epigenetics reflects the essential connector between classical protein mutation to environmental trigger and advancement of mind to (and similarly) - environmental 'survival' -
- though I prefer now - to recharacterize the idea of environmental survival - which has an element of desperately clinging onto life -
- into the celebration of life
and evolutionary ascension within constraint of environmental energetic availability.

So - common usage of

environmental survival -> evolutionary pressure upon all things to become 'better.'

'Better' - here has a tight definition - reflecting increased content of potential energy
(from earlier in this thread).

There is only evolution and evolution is unidirectional -
its only :-)
desire
for everything (not just us) - to become 'better' (usage as above).

Switching now - to the more common usage of better - it's time that we became better - because

all of this ->
they are not brilliant
she does not have a greater intelligence than you
he is not stupid
<- all of that

- quite frankly - is real stupid - and not worthy of a self-proclaimed intelligent species.

From the perspective of mind -
- which is the sole definition of man (modern man) -
we are all 'potential'ly the same.

Lack in proper (and sometimes individualized) education to all is the sole reason for the use of 'potential' above
and explains why man appears to display such widely different intelligences
- in 'public' life.

Therein lies the difference between the selfish gene and the selfish logical model (meme)
(both constructs of Dawkins - I believe) -
- it's impossible to be 7 feet tall if being 7 feet tall is not described within one's genetic makeup -
- however that's the physical aspect of man (legacy animal aspect of man) - and we're defined by the higher evolutionary character of mind -
- where anybody can be anything ->
-> truly echoing the pattern of transition (which man has seen through our recorded history)
- of legacy animal rule ->- collective rule

~that is~
of autocracy -> collective democratic rule
of an Emperor -> collective forum rule
of monarchy -> equivalence in power between all citizens

- however the notion of competition between countries for resources need also be dropped -
- since a one world philosophy (as witnessed here on ADDF) - where all humans share responsibility for our collective -
- is the clear - final deliverable which this process of change in man
- of man learning to use his own mind -
will deliver.

One World of equals -
the emergent structure of mind's very special gift to us.

And of course - what ensues

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
mais pour tout.

That's how we work.

Simply
one idea :

(3->4->13d)n

-> provides the undeniable meaning of life
(without need for proof - because we'll all know that it's right
- just as nobody has ever needed to prove to another
that the sky is blue).

[Revz]

Originally Posted by SB_UK

Therein lies the difference between the selfish gene and the selfish logical model (meme)
(both constructs of Dawkins - I believe) -
- it's impossible to be 7 feet tall if being 7 feet tall is not described within one's genetic makeup -

I love dawkins; a very talented author.

Originally Posted by SB_UK

- however that's the physical aspect of man (legacy animal aspect of man) - and we're defined by the higher evolutionary character of mind -
- where anybody can be anything ->
-> truly echoing the pattern of transition (which man has seen through our recorded history)
- of legacy animal rule ->- collective rule

~that is~
of autocracy -> collective democratic rule
of an Emperor -> collective forum rule
of monarchy -> equivalence in power between all citizens

- however the notion of competition between countries for resources need also be dropped -
- since a one world philosophy (as witnessed here on ADDF) - where all humans share responsibility for our collective -
- is the clear - final deliverable which this process of change in man
- of man learning to use his own mind -
will deliver.

One World of equals -
the emergent structure of mind's very special gift to us.

I agree and your point is very well explained and I doubt anyone could find a logical hole in that argument. *Ignoring Personal Perspective*+Focusing on the logical reasoning within.

[SB_UK]

POST # 1 ---6--- POST # 1
Will we ever have a theory of everything?
==
---36---
Why do we still have big questions?
...
...
---47---
What are the fundamental degrees of freedom of M-theory (the theory whose low-energy limit is eleven-dimensional supergravity and which subsumes the five consistent superstring theories) and does the theory describe Nature?
---41---
Are all the (measurable) dimensionless parameters that characterize the physical universe calculable in principle or are some merely determined by historical or quantum mechanical accident and uncalculable?
---44---
Is Nature supersymmetric, and if so, how is supersymmetry broken?
---18---
What is the universe made of?
...
...
---42---
How can quantum gravity help explain the origin of the universe?
---16---
How do entangled particles communicate?
...
...
---49---
What physics explains the enormous disparity between the gravitational scale and the typical mass scale of the elementary particles?
---34---
What causes gravity?
...
...
---32---
Can mathematicians prove the Riemann hypothesis?
---46---
Why does the cosmological constant have the value that it has, is it zero and is it really constant?
...
...
---26---
Why is fundamental physics so messy?
---43---
What is the lifetime of the proton and how do we understand it?
---50---
Can we quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement in Quantum Chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap?
---38---
What is the Large Hadron Collider?
...
...
---1---
What is reality?
->
~rrreality~ + ~RRReality~
...
...
~rrreality~
---5---
What is consciousness?
---25---
How does the brain produce consciousness?
---3---
Do we have free will?
...
...
~rrreality~ (mind)
---15---
How can observation affect the outcome of an experiment?
---17---
Why do placebos work?
...
...
~RRReality~
---4---
Is the universe deterministic?
...
...
~information~
---21---
What happens to information in a black hole?
==
---48---
What is the resolution of the black hole information paradox?
---30---
Is the universe actually made of information?
...
...
~time~
---45---
Why does the universe appear to have one time and three space dimensions?
---10---
Is time an illusion?
...
...
~life~
---2---
What is life?
---14---
Where did life come from?
---40---
If there is life on other planets, why haven’t they contacted us?
...
...
---12---
Why do we sleep?
...
...
POST # 2 ---8--- POST # 2
What comes after humans?
...
...
---7---
What happens after you die?
---33---
Why do we die when we do?
...
...
---37---
Which counts more: ~nature~ or ~nurture~?
...
~nature~
---19---
What is the purpose of noncoding DNA?

~nurture~
---13---
What happened to the Neanderthals?
---27---
How doth human language evolve?
---41---
Do nonhuman animals have culture?
...
...
~environment~
~---24---
Why do the poles reverse?
---20---
Will forests slow global warming - or speed it up?
...
...
~sequence~
---11---
How does a fertilized egg become a human?
---35---
Why can’t we regrow body parts?
---28---
Why can’t we predict the weather?
---29---
Why don’t we understand turbulence?
---39---
Is time travel possible?
...
...
---23---
How does the brain calculate movement?
...
...
---31---
Why do some diseases turn into pandemics?
...
...
---9---
What’s at Earth’s core?
---22---
What causes ice ages?

[SB_UK]

Originally Posted by Revz

... ... ...

:-)

If (3d-4d-13d)n can answer all of the questions which we seek answers for ...

(3d-4d-13d)n
-> provides the undeniable meaning of life
(without need for proof - because we'll all know that it's right
- just as nobody has ever needed to prove to another
that the sky is blue).

then we'll know what we've always suspected - and have proof in what we've always strongly believed.

The good guys in this world have all been credibly and not pretend moral -
not politically correct moral (under threat of punishment) -
- but truly 'good'.

So - why?

The solution is interesting - because it exposes morality to be a biophysical property - kinda' like diamond is hard.
And in the light of an actual biophysical process - favourable kinetics can be defined.

The profound nature (though actually just so intuitively appealing) - is that we define our own mechanism for happiness within context of all things which exist -
- a kinda' more than 'everything'

and so place ourselves within context of the Universe (and not as 'gods' as previously) - though gain all of those components of life - which science had sought to eradicate -
including an understanding of the basis of metaphysics.

These ideas unite physics with metaphysics.

Science (as the study of reality) is not allowed to pick and choose its subject of scrutiny -
- it needs to envelope issues including god, spirituality, faith, belief -
and to produce a single model which explains our ENTIRE context.

( -> 3-d -> 4-d -> 13-d -> )n
(just a few characters)
does just that.

It's all we need to know.

:-)

[Revz]

Originally Posted by SB_UK

( -> 3-d -> 4-d -> 13-d -> )n

So basicly (dumbing it down a little for me) that means the universe is this:


[<-[->[<-[->[u]<-]->]<-]->]

Meaning the universe is infinite which means that all possibilities are possible and do happen within the same area...

On some planet that looks just like ours and have humans just like ours and a sun just like ours and some one who looks just like me i could be...


Hitler?
A power ranger?
not ADD?
Have 8 workable arms?

and not only that but its not that it could be.. its that it has already happened/is happening or will eventually happen considering the meaning of infinite would change the equation for the likly hood of something happening from (using a quarter as an example; heads) 1/2=.5 chance and changes that to; 1/2=1 sense all possibilities are infinite and that is one of many and WILL happen..

but that makes no sense...

hmmmm how do you explain that one?

actually it makes total sense.... sort of.. help! haha

hmmmm... i wonder
many years from now


*math test*

Bobby J.
2+2=22

Teacher: wrong
Bobby: NO! see ( -> 3-d -> 4-d -> 13-d -> )n means everything is possible so all answers are correct eventually. Give me an A.

[Revz]

Is this a good visual representation? (its the E8 graph)

[Sargon]

I read once that the brain's ability to store and express dopamine is the source of our "joie de vivre," and that it decreases with age. Is it possible that the ADD brain has evolved to conserve dopamine in preparation of a drastically longer lifespan?

[SB_UK]

Originally Posted by Revz

... ... ... this is really very interesting

[SB_UK]

Originally Posted by Sargon

I read once that the brain's ability to store and express dopamine is the source of our "joie de vivre," and that it decreases with age. Is it possible that the ADD brain has evolved to conserve dopamine in preparation of a drastically longer lifespan?

... ... ... as is this really very interesting indeed